halofanonfandomcom-20200223-history
Project DEMOPHILUS
Began shortly after Doctor Catherine Halsey's SPARTAN-II program, Project DEMOPHILUS was a long running program pioneered by veteran military scientist Doctor Herschel Schmidt to copy Halsey's work and continue the production of SPARTAN supersoldiers. Over the course of the project's history, it would produce numerous Spartans following both SPARTAN-II and III protocols in an effort to field as many soldiers as possible. By the time the project was officially discontinued following the end of the Human-Covenant War, it had, either directly or indirectly, produced more Spartan-grade soldiers than either Halsey's or Ackerson's projects combined. History Origins DEMOPHILUS found its beginning shortly after Halsey proposed her idea for a second generation of the decommissioned Project ORION, codenamed SPARTAN-II. Enthralled by her ideas and vision but wary of her loyalty, Doctor Herschel Schmidt, a career military scientist who had found his start working on the second phase of ORION, proposed a vastly different idea. According to Schmidt's plan, Halsey's batch would be the control group from which Schmidt would base his own group off of, learning from her mistakes to improve his own results. Parangosky, sharing her beliefs with Schmidt, agreed to his proposal and cut Halsey's funding shortly after she had identified her candidates, transferring it to the new Project DEMOPHILUS. SPARTAN-II Following the splitting of Halsey's budget, DEMOPHILUS agents moved quickly to secure the candidates Halsey had decided or was unable to conscript, bringing them to HLIDSKJALF Base on the industrial Inner Colony of New Carthage. Using agents carefully implanted in the SPARTAN-II Program, Schmidt and his staff painstakingly reconstructed Halsey's training regime, from its exercises to its diet and sleep protocols, modifying it as needed. Using the predicted effectiveness of the SPARTAN-IIs, Schmidt and his team came to the conclusion that team structures only made Spartans marginally more effective combat units and decided that if they were deployed individually, they could engage the same targets as teams with less risk of multiple casualties. As such, the exercises were modified to focus more on solo combat and operations rather than the heavy emphasis on teamwork that Halsey pushed. Having to rely on smuggled data packages from Reach caused the DEMOPHILUS branch to fall behind Halsey's schedule by at least six months, with augmentations expected to take place at the end of 2525. Following the Reach Spartans' own augmentations and horrendous casualties, Schmidt held off until Halsey had developed additional protocols for both the base augmentations and rehabilitation protocols for the washouts before proceeding. As such, final training extended into the first half of 2526, and by the time preparations were ready, several Outer Colonies had already fallen to the alien hegemony known as the Covenant. Following their augmentations, which saw a significantly higher survival rate than the Reach branch thanks to improvements Halsey had developed over the past year and a half, they were equipped with suits of the new MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor/Mark IV and deployed against Insurrectionist targets across human space while the rest of the UNSC shifted focus to fight the Covenant. Project THESPIA Following the graduation of Class I, Doctor Halsey began immediate preparations for a second class and though prospects seemed bright initially, complications soon made it clear that Class II was unlikely to happen. These included a lack of suitable candidates whom Halsey believed to be of a lower overall quality to her original group and a drastic reduction of her funding as it was redirected to other projects, causing her to eventually abandon the program altogether. In reality, once it had become clear that Halsey had no desire to immediately produce more Spartans, Schmidt used this and his already impressive political clout within ONI to convince his superiors to redirect Halsey's funding to his own program and therefore make DEMOPHILUS the sole producer of Spartans. Despite essentially usurping Halsey from the creation of new Spartans, he was forced to admit that she had been correct in her assessment that there would not be enough candidates to form a significantly large enough second class. After discussing it with his staff, Schmidt proposed what he dubbed Project THESPIA to Admiral Parangosky and others within ONI. It detailed plans to conscript, train, and augment candidates outside of the training class structure Halsey had established. Initially concerned that THESPIA's overarching costs, while less expensive than Halsey's program in the short term, would torpedo the project before it could get off the ground, though Schmidt's belief in the importance of Spartans and the Covenant's continued onslaught throughout the Outer Colonies eventually won out and the project was approved. Repeating the process from DEMOPHILUS and SPARTAN-II before it, THESPIA scoured the colonies and collected forty two candidates and brought them to the training center on New Carthage. Unlike the initial DEMOPHILUS-trained group, the candidates of THESPIA would be trained in team environments like Halsey's SPARTAN-IIs, with a greater focus on fighting the Covenant rather than insurrectionists. SPARTAN-III SPARTAN-II Class III Post-War and Disbanding Category:Demons of Hope Category:SPARTAN